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Thursday, November 10, 2016

Star Trek: The Next Generation - Episode 14 (Datalore)

Note: This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

How many times have you seen one of those evil-twin stories? There are a
lot of them, and they’re usually not that good. “Datalore” is no
exception. The Enterprise is going to Omicron Theta, which is where Data
was ‘born’ 26 years ago. He’s an android created by Dr. Noonian Soong.
He now serves as the chief science officer on the Enterprise. It was
believed that he was the only one until that fateful day during the
first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation

Some mysterious
force destroyed all life on the planet, but the landing party finds a
secret entrance that leads them to Dr. Soong’s lab. They find several
drawings on the wall, all of which depict some sort of alien force hovering
above the city. In a storage area, the landing party finds another
android; this one has been disassembled and is not active. The landing
party takes the pieces back up to the ship, where the chief engineer
reassembles the newly discovered android.

When they turn him
on, they have to wait before he becomes conscious. His name is Lore and
he apparently is the opposite of Data in terms of personality and
programming. Lore can lie, use contractions and show emotion. Data is
compelled to tell the truth, can’t use contractions at all and has no
emotion at all.

It turns out that Lore was behind the
destruction of the colony. He had led what was called the Crystalline
Entity to the colony; the Entity drained the planet of all life. Now,
Lore wants to give the Enterprise over to the Crystalline Entity. Lore
even tricks Data, deactivates him and assumes his identity.

Wesley Crusher, the boy genius, is the only one that seems to notice,
despite the fact that there are several clues. When Wesley points out
that Data might not be Data, the adult crew members are dismissive of
him. It doesn’t come off well at all. In the end, Wesley is able to
reactivate Data; the two of them save the day together. Data throws Lore
onto a transporter pad and Wesley beams him off into space.

I
have some major problems with this episode. First off, the shields were
up. Lore was going to transport something out as a pretense to get the
shields down, thus allowing the Crystalline Entity in. Since the Entity
was unable to affect the ship, I have to assume that the shields weren’t
dropped. If the shields weren’t dropped, where was Lore seno? It
would have had to have been somewhere within the boundary set by the
shields. On top of that, they just leave Lore so that he can just drift
in space or be dragged along until the shields are dropped.

Speaking of Lore, why didn’t anyone wonder why Lore had been
disassembled in the first place? I also have to wonder how Lore met the
Crystalline Entity in the first place. Plus, how did anyone have time to
draw pictures of the entity? It seemed as though the Crystalline Entity
was more than ready to get down to business.

Also, as Data is
leaving the cargo bay after the fight, Captain Picard asks Data if he’s
all right. Data says, “I’m fine.” They made this big deal about Data
not being able to use contractions and here he goes and uses one. At
first, I thought I was imagining it, but it’s even listed on TV Tome and
other people have noticed it, too.

I also don’t get the
episode’s title, “Datalore”. At first, I assumed that it meant
something. However, I can’t find datalore in any dictionary. So far as I
can tell, it’s just a combination of Data and Lore. If there is some
meaning, I don’t know what it is.

This episode is worth two
stars. It sets up several others, but this one is poorly written. The
effects and acting are good, though. Ultimately, I can’t recommend it.